Bring Back Anger
by Mar Álvarez
There is nothing more healing than recounting a story about someone who has slighted you to your stoic, middle-aged, male therapist and getting a sincere and visceral gasp of outrage in response. There is also nothing like only realizing, in that moment that outraged gasp should’ve come from you…a year ago when the story was taking place in real time. It also becomes the moment that you realize, at twenty-five years old, you’ve somehow forgotten how to truly be angry.
I knew how to do it as a child, the rage rising up from the pit of my stomach, making my chest feel tight around my body, my forehead suddenly hot, and my words loose at big and small injustices. Sharp and scathing before my mind had the chance to filter, I demanded what I wanted and protested what I thought was wrong. The anger let me know when a situation infringed on my boundaries. As an adult woman, however, when anger was warranted on equal parts principle and self-preservation, I found I had lost the skill
Anger has disappeared from conversations about our inner lives. When I look around, it seems missing from public discourse on interpersonal relationships, lost in the deluge of toxic positivity and misguided perpetual efforts at self-improvement. The “evolved” person understands they can “only control the way they react to others,” manifests positivity and abundance, fixes their attachment style, and learns to be friends with the people who hurt them. The room for feeling and expressing anger is limited, if present at all.
In some ways, this is an extension of a much longer history of anger being unacceptable in society when expressed by someone outside the hegemonic group. In the case of women, anger brings up images of the shrew. We see her in Mean Girls’ Regina George, in Bring It On’s Isis, Jennifer’s Body’s Jennifer, and of course, 10 Things I Hate About You’s Kat Stratford: the resentful woman living outside of what’s acceptable and ruining everyone’s time while doing it. Certain studies have even found that angry women are often perceived as having lower status and being less competent than angry men or “unemotional” women. Being an angry, god-forbid, bitter woman is not something you want to be.
These ideas, obviously, don’t make women less likely to experience anger. Anger is an emotion that demands to be felt—explosive, ballistic, fuming. However, research has repeatedly found that men and women experience anger at a similar rate despite often expressing aggression differently. While anger is the emotion, aggression is the behavior we attach to it, often hostile or violent. Not expressing or taking part in aggression doesn’t make anyone any less angry. Where aggression is the visible explosive reaction, anger is the dynamite, gunpowder, and kindling. It exists whether set-off or not.
However, without the reaction, it is easy to mistake it for something else. As psychiatric-mental health specialist Sandra Thomas put it in a 2005 article reviewing fifteen years of research on women’s anger and aggression, anger when described by women, is often so muddled in with other emotions it becomes hard to identify, “being inextricable from hurt, sadness, disillusionment, disappointment, and other painful feelings. Women wondered, ‘Was this feeling anger or hurt?’ Could they bravely name the feeling of anger ?”
It’s only recently that I’ve begun to pinpoint moments in my own life where what I expressed as deep sadness was actually unresolved anger: dismissive and manipulative partners, out-of-touch coworkers, one-sided friendships. I look back now and can almost see myself packing my anger neatly and tightly into a casing that was easier for others to handle. So neatly, I only realized what was actually inside when I finally recounted these moments to other people, often days, months, or even years after I had experienced the original rage-inducing transgression. Continuously misidentifying anger, in some ways, serves a purpose. It allows us to overcome slights and injustices without confrontation. It skirts the consequences of a reaction and maintains the status quo of our relationships. Anger can feel out of control and destabilizing, almost like you’re going through delayed adolescence. And if you don’t have a lot of experience with it, it’s easy to second-guess the validity of your reaction. Sadness is the smaller ask. A question over a demand. Sadness is the safer bet. It is also incredibly limiting.
As well-intentioned as this defense mechanism might be, it hinders your ability to form deep connections with others. Without conflict, it is tough to drive the plot forward. We give up seeing the uglier, grittier sides of each other and, with it, the ability to know each other wholly. Where sadness pushes you to look inward and internalize your one-sided experience of conflict, anger invites action and resolution from the other party involved. It’s an emotion felt and directed towards something outside yourself. A message that expects a reply. Its instability and explosive nature can pull us out of isolation.
I still wonder how past situations would have changed if I had allowed myself to feel angry and shared it unabashedly when warranted. In the depths of rumination, I try to change these memories. I dream myself tougher and more callus, my tongue sharper and steadfast in articulating my feelings. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
Would I have gotten a sincere apology? Would they have stopped acting the way they did? I don’t know. And truthfully, for certain individuals, my bet is leaning toward a big fat no. They were always beyond redemption. But I do know that feeling and acting on that anger would have been the braver choice, a greater act of self-care than being the “bigger person.” Setting aside and transmuting it into sadness now feels like a personal betrayal, something else to be angry about. I have learned my lesson.
It is time to reinstate anger into our emotional lexicon. I am still working on the methods. I test the waters. Like the generational stereotype I am, I keep track of the times I feel angry in a growing list on my notes app. Retroactive entries are allowed. No moment is too stupid or too small. I read them back and agree or disagree with the entries. Highlights include: a very rude pilates instructor, uncommunicative grown men, and a beloved pair of jeans that have lost their shape. The vulnerability of anger feels less intimidating. I try to let people know when I disagree with them; and reactions are never as bad as I expect them to be. I let them see me. I feel closer to them.
I allow anger to trickle back into my life. I know it’ll level the ground, sink into the soil, and perhaps allow herbage with deeper roots to flourish.
